Blog 3 Columns

This Latin Phrase Might Make You Worried about Where American Society is Headed 0
- History
- August 17, 2015
Nemo dat quod non habet—“No one gives what he doesn’t have.” Within the legal world, this phrase refers to the principle that one cannot confer property on another that doesn’t belong to him in the first place. Another way of putting it: A can’t steal from B and then rightfully sell or give the stolen
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Study: Teacher Development Courses are Ineffective 0
- August 17, 2015
Teacher development courses are ineffective. Common sense reached that conclusion long ago. But fortunately, there’s now a study that confirms it entitled “The Mirage: Confronting the Hard Truth About Our Quest for Teacher Development.” According to The Boston Globe, “The study released Tuesday by TNTP, a nonprofit organization, found no evidence that any particular approach
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Does Party Affiliation Influence Marital Bliss?0
- August 17, 2015
Does your party affiliation influence your marital bliss? Today’s New York Times suggests that it may. Reporting on a recent study by W. Bradford Wilcox, the NYT reports: “Among married people between the ages of 20 and 60, 67 percent of Republicans report being ‘very happy’ with their marriages. Among Democrats, the share was
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10 Provocative Quotes from Ivan Illich’s “Deschooling Society”0
- August 17, 2015
Ivan Illich’s groundbreaking book Deschooling Society (1971) offers a radical critique of the institutionalization of education within modern societies. Illich believed that we wrongly identify education with schooling, since most of our education happens outside of the school environment. He advocated restructuring education to provide people with multiple opportunities for learning outside of school. “What
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500 Years Ago, This is What Europeans Were Doing on August 15 0
- August 15, 2015
The answer: celebrating the feast of Mary’s Assumption. From early centuries, Christians believed that Jesus Christ’s mother, Mary, was taken up (“assumed”) body and soul into heaven upon her death. They celebrated this event annually with a feast day since at least the 6th century. And in Europe of 1515, when the overwhelming majority of
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University Proposes a Campus Retirement Community for Alumni 0
- August 14, 2015
In the Western world, the university was created to be a utopian environment of learning separated off from the harshness and ignorance of the world outside. At many of today’s universities, learning has taken a backseat, but the utopian ambitions remain, now mainly in the form of entertainment. For four to eight years, students can
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Sex in a Time of Hooking Up 0
- August 14, 2015
Trending on Vanity Fair right now is an article entitled “Tinder and the Dawn of the ‘Dating Apocalypse.’” (For those who don’t know, Tinder is one of many “dating” apps that also happens to be frequently used by millennials to hook up with each other on short notice.) The article describes a world where young
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Presidential Candidates Better Have This Character Trait 0
- August 14, 2015
Campaign season has (unfortunately) started once again. According to a presidential cheat sheet from The Atlantic, there are roughly eight alleged presidential candidates for the Democrats and a whopping 20 for the Republicans. Don’t worry, they’ll be whittled down soon enough, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them are naturally knocked out of
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Beware Teachers Like These Ones in Ancient Greece 0
- August 14, 2015
Their name? “Sophists.” In Norms and Nobility David Hicks writes: “Socrates was a nuisance to many of the educators of his day, the utilitarian Sophists who were experts at teaching their students how to function within the madding city of Athens. A Sophist tended to accept the ‘givens’: an advocacy system that had lost the
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This Latin Phrase Might Make You Worried about Where American Society is Headed 0